Cilicia Museum

Want an entire museum to yourself?
Cilicia has plenty of history on display, but sadly, it usually goes unseen

Stephanie Saldana
Daily Star staff

When a group of Armenian monks carted the remains of their church from
former Turkish Armenia to Lebanon almost 90 years ago, they fought through
trials worthy of The Legends of the Saints, Marvel Comics and possibly even
the Exodus plagues.

They had no idea that their cargo would become one of the most impressive,
and most anonymous, museums in modern Lebanon.

Inaugurated in 1998, the Cilicia Museum is Lebanon's third-largest museum,
ranking behind only the National Museum and the Sursock Museum in size.
While it may be a trifle smaller than these giants, what it lacks in size
it makes up for in the quality and quantity of its collection.

With no less than 230 rare medieval Armenian manuscripts, row upon row of
delicate silver chalices and altar pieces, reliquaries, a stash of 2,000
ancient coins and an entire floor of modern Armenian paintings, the Cilicia
Museum is said to be the most extensive collection of Christian artifacts
in the country. It is the largest collection of Armenian artifacts in the
world outside of Armenia itself.

But in Lebanon, where the fate of the collection at the National Museum
bears witness to the toll war can take on the past, and where antiquities
are still said to be leaving the country, the story behind the creation of
the Cilicia Museum is also a heartening reminder of what can happen when
people are willing to carry the past on their backs rather than let go of
it.

In September 1915, Armenian monks from the Monastery of Sis in Cilicia, in
what was formerly Turkish Armenia, were given the news that they had 10
days to pack their belongings before they had to flee to Aleppo. The
reality of the Armenian genocide had become apparent, and thousands were
evacuating Cilicia in an effort to escape widespread persecution from the
Turks.

Recognizing that the Monastery of Sis would soon be in flames, the monks of
the Catholicosate of Cilicia grabbed everything they could ­ chalices,
ancient manuscripts, tapestries, coins, photographs ­ packed them up in
boxes, loaded them onto donkeys and often onto their backs, and began the
journey to Aleppo and later into Lebanon.

Accounts of the 23-day ordeal from Sis to Aleppo vary, but the monks
themselves have taken on a mythical status usually reserved for cartoon
heroes and medieval saints.

According to eyewitness Bishop Adjapahyan, on that first day of traveling
in 1915, a wagon carrying the bulk of the monastery's treasures collapsed
into a river and monks braved the currents, diving to the bottom to recover
them. They then stumbled through deserts. The wheels on their carriages
broke. They escaped bandits. Then, when they finally arrived in Aleppo and
later in Antelias, they carried with them the foundations for what would
become the most astonishing museum you've probably never seen in Lebanon.

More than collection of artifacts, the museum seems an almost surreal
miracle, the remnants of the Monastery of Sis disassembled in Cilicia and
reconstructed in Lebanon over 80 years later. It is a monument in stone to
the changes Armenian art and the Armenians themselves have undergone,
particularly in the past 1000 years.

Archbishop Yeprem Tabakian, the museum's director, explains that the museum
attempts to display not just artifacts of Armenian history, but the story
of that history itself.

`This is a museum, but at the same time this museum reflects our history,
our participation in the civilization of the world,' he said. `The Armenian
history and the Armenian religion go together. Here the items are
religious, but at the same time historical and national.'

Beyond all of this, for the casual observer at least, the museum is a
fantastic collection of art. Entering the ground floor, one is immediately
faced with the bulk of the artifacts from the Sis Monastery, a collection
of such magnitude and quality that it seems both astonishing and
embarrassing that so few have shown up to see it.

The centerpiece is the newly restored Gospel of Partserpet, which dates
from 1248 and features illustrations that are almost flawless in their
detail. Beside it, the Vessel of the Holy Oil dominates the room. An
enormous silver chalice-like object, it was designed in 1817 in
Constantinople and detailed with the lives of saints. Originally created to
mix baptismal oil, a process that takes 40 days and requires 40 types of
herbs, today it is still removed once every seven years in order fulfil its
purpose.

Those fascinated by the architecture of the original Monastery of Sis will
no doubt find the three pure silver chandeliers ­ broader than hoopskirts
and dismantled in Cilicia piece by piece and carted away ­ to be
masterpieces not only on artistry, but of human perseverance.

For medievalists, the second floor showcases the finest of the museum's 230
numbered medieval manuscripts. The oldest of them date from the ninth and
10th centuries, and those from later centuries are opened to pages
revealing extraordinary miniatures. The facial details vary in technique
and color according to the region and influence of their origin. The
variety of influence exhibited in these manuscripts is a testament to the
depth of the medieval Armenian tradition.

Those with a critical eye may appreciate the repetition of the color red ­
the red pigment was extracted from worms that thrived only in Armenia.

For those with modern tastes, the third floor reveals a sizable collection
of more-recent Armenian paintings from throughout the diaspora, the
highlight being the 1884 oil painting The Ocean and the Boat by
Russian-Armenian master Ivan Ayvazovski. Depicting a single boat lost on
violent waters, it seems a sad premonition of Armenian history.

No matter when you show up, chances are high that you'll have the
collection to yourself. Museum guide Annie Boghossian admits that only one
fourth of the visitors to the Cilicia Museum are actually Lebanese, and
that many who do visit hear about it only from friends who have visited
from other countries.

This seems a shame. Not only is the collection extraordinary in its own
right, but those who trudged through the desert with its contents deserve
some form of homage. As Boghossian explains: `The museum … is symbolic of
the survival of one life in another. Every single item is a witness to
those days, to everything that has happened.'

The Armenian Museum is located at the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Antelias.
It is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm and 10am to 1pm on Sunday.
Admission is free. Call 04-410-001 or see www.cathcil.org